'Witch's brew': Air NZ boss Greg Foran signals more turbulent times ahead in 2025

The turbulent times Air New Zealand has experienced in 2024 are set to continue in 2025, with more delays to routes and the delivery of its retrofitted Dreamliners. CE Greg Foran spoke to Stuff senior travel reporter Emma Stanford about the year that was and the year ahead. 2025 could be off to a bad start for Air New Zealand. A fifth Boeing 787 Dreamliner is estimated to be grounded at the end of January. Air New Zealand grounded a fourth Dreamliner in November due to ongoing issues with the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines. Two of them are in Alice Springs. CE Greg Foran said grounding a fifth plane will depend on when the engines come back from Rolls Royce in the UK. “We've made the decision to plan for that. We'd rather deal with any disruption and give customers time to plan rather than throw it on them last minute. This has been one of the challenges that we've had to deal with during the year. Rolls-Royce will give us a view as to what they think's going to happen, but that could change six times during the year, every two months.” Foran has recently returned to New Zealand after visiting Rolls Royce, Pratt and Whitney and Airbus and told RNZ last week that engine disruptions would carry on for at least another two or three years.<br/>